Samuel Smithers first appeared in Strange Tales #113 back in October 1963. While working in London as a botanists assistant, Samuel Smithers became involved with experiments to explore the mental activity of plants. after 10 years the botanist died and Smithers moved to the US, where he planned to continue his work in trying to increase the intelligence of plants so that humans could communicate with them. However due to his lack of formal education he had difficulty in finding support for his ideas and was forced to take a job as a gardener. Smithers tried to combine the job with his research, but eventually fired for spending too much time on his experiments. Not long after Smithers lost his job, a bolt of lightning struck his experimental plant ray gun, charging the device with the power to control and animate plant life. Smithers put on a costume and taking the name Plantman, sought the revenge on the man who had fired him but was stopped by the Human Torch who had destroyed the plant gun. Undeterred Plantman built a second more powerful weapon and tried to kill the Human Torch but his plan all but failed. Later he joined the International Crime Syndicate the Maggia. Creating plant duplicates of himself, Plantman battle the X-Men, The Avengers, Namor, Triton and S.H.I.E.L.D among others. Over the years, Smithers body gradually mutated to become more and more plantlike. At one point he connected with the Verdant Green the manifestation of the Earths bioshpere and was given the option of wiping humans from the planet or preserving them. Although his transformation had already cost him a great deal of his humanity , he chose to let the people of Earth live. For a while he worked with the Thunderbolts under Hawkeyes leadership using the name Blackheath. He since returned to prison to serve out his sentence and to try to reconnect with his sense if humanity. - Talon
Posted on: Tue, 30 Dec 2014 13:08:27 +0000
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